The Shedd Institute
your family, pay some bills. Then you’ll
have an appreciation for the American
way, where you get what you earn, and life
isn’t handed to you.
I’m sure in this liberal town, I’ll be
labeled as a racist, a hater, bigot, etc., simply
because I believe you should work for what
you have. But it’s the American way.
James Hadd
Eugene
ON THE RIGHT SIDE
To James Hadd: I thought it was
hilarious that you called me a “delusional”
liberal, while you’re the one with some
outrageous ideas. For one, you expressed
the idea of preventing people who can die
for their country from voting. Without
looking it up, I know that the 26th
Amendment removes that flaw.
Thanks in a large part to the deterioration
of socialist policies such as national
education and social security (because
Republicans have tried to privatize the two
and raise the retirement age), the minimum
wage is often not a stepping stone. I can
credit a 2014 Bureau of Labor Statistics
survey that says over half of the minimum
wage workforce is over 25 years old.
This happens because the conservative
ideas of small economic government
(laissez-faire and trickle-down economics)
are not helping the middle class move up.
The conservative ideology was adapted to
the common man by dangling the carrot in
front of the pigs’ nose, if you will, that if
you’re rich — excuse me, when you’re
rich (so conservatives promise) — you
won’t want to pay higher taxes.
Conservatives hide the flaw in their
plan, that the flat tax they worship
crushes any hope the common man
has of becoming wealthy. Moving on,
“getting everything for free” is a huge
overstatement. Student debt and college
tuition are huge problems, and I know
that in a few years I’ll be working my
hardest to get a scholarship so my parents
(two able, working-class parents) can
afford to retire at a reasonable age.
You chastise liberal policies that give
the poor “too much money” while your
party takes billions if not trillions to
fund our already massive military. Not to
mention aggression towards the Middle
East only makes the problem worse. You
think they hate us now? They’ll hate
us even more after we carpet bomb yet
another of their towns, already plagued
with disease, dehydration and hunger.
Why you spent some of your time
trying to attack an optimistic teenager, I’ll
never know, but what I do know is that
I’m glad that I’m on the right side of the
political fence.
Ian Curtis
South Eugene High School freshman
Eugene
www.theshedd.org - 541.434.7000
Phoebe
Gildea
Then & Now
Thu, June 2
Carrie
Rodriguez
Sacred Heart Tour
June 7
GOOD TRAIN SOUNDS
There remains discussion about
limiting train whistle noise to certain
Cyrille
Aimée
June 8
Shedd Theatricals
2016
G e o r ge & I r a G e rs hwi n’s
1 927 mu s i ca l co me dy c lass i c
FUNNY FACE
June 17-26 - The Shedd
eugeneweekly.com • June 2, 2016
7